Most writers, researchers and
consultants in the field of emotional intelligence (EI)
typically promote only the "good" side of it.
They say it makes people better students, better
employees, better managers, better soldiers
etc. Or they say it makes everyone more
"successful". How they define
"better" or "succesful" is an
important question, but it is usually left unaddressed.
Instead, it is assumed that we all know what such words
mean. In other words, we are all expected to accept the
common definitions of them without question. (See comment) But
leaving aside the issue of what defines a
"better" person, in this article I talk about
what I call the dark side of EI.

Not satisfied with the common
definition of EI, I have long suspected that a person's
innate emotional intelligence could be warped by an
abusive environment. In my experiences with teens, I am
finding this to be exactly the case. The depressed,
suicidal and self-harming teens I have worked with all
come from emotionally abusive and neglectful families.
Often there has been sexual abuse. Among these teens, I
am finding that those I would consider to be the most
emotionally intelligent are also fast learners and have
good memory and recall. Sadly, because they are so
emotionally hurt and starved, they are learning,
remembering, developing and using unhealthy, destructive,
hurtful or dangerous survival mechanisms.

Here is an initial list of what I
have found from these emotionally intelligent, yet
emotionally abused and neglected teens:

- They learn to manipulate.
They need to manipulate because their needs were not
met by simply asking or expressing their needs
directly

- They learn to use their tone
of voice, their words, their silence to manipulate

- They learn how to threaten
you with what will hurt or frighten others the most

- They remember things they can
use to hurt others with when they feel hurt

- They get hurt easily because
they have been hurt so many times. This hurt causes
them pain and they become desperate to stop it. It is
this desperation which leads them to lie, manipulate,
threaten etc.

- They become nearly constantly
defensive and therefore lose their childhood ability
to empathize

- They may become bitter,
cynical, sarcastic

- They learn how to verbally
attack (See note on
why we attack others)

- They learn hurtful phrases
and quickly recall and apply them

- They can sense when someone
is upset with them or is going to be, so if they are
afraid of conflicts, as many are, they learn to do
whatever it takes to avoid that person's disapproval
or anger

- They learn responses to
defend themselves

- They learn when to be
evasive, for example, when to say "I don't
know" and "I don't remember"

- They learn how to apologize
when it serves them; how to beg for mercy and
forgiveness

These are just some of the things I
have noticed, I expect there are several more.

What is most sad to me is that all
these teens I work with feel alone, unloved and unwanted.
They are desperate to feel connected, cared about,
understood, loved and wanted. They often hate themselves,
so they look for love in relationships. But they don't
have the necessary ingredients to make a relationship
work. They don't have the needed self-love or even
self-acceptance. They don't have the relationship skills
or communication skills. These things are not taught in
schools and all they see are dysfunctional models at
home. These emotionally needy teens get into romantic
relationships with other emotionally
needy people. These
relationships are unlikely to work, so they end up
feeling more disillusioned, bitter, jaded and depressed.

It is a vicious cycle. Their high
level of innate EI has given them an ability to both feel
emotional pain and to hurt others emotionally. The
survival instinct has programmed humans to attack what is
hurting us and to defend ourselves from it. Because
emotionally intelligent people are sensitive, they are
easily hurt. They are also insecure from years of feeling
disapproved of, disappointing, threatened, afraid,
unworthy, inadequate, guilty, etc. Because of this
insecurity, they take everything personally and are
easily put on the defensive. Or they may go on the
attack.

When the body is in attack mode, it
doesn't feel its own pain. The energy is redirected. For
some people, there may even be pleasure in hurting
others. This brings to mind the lyrics in the song by
Hall and Oates "it's so easy to hurt others when you
can't feel pain." But these people did feel pain
once. They felt it more intensely than their peers. They
felt the pain of injustice and hypocrisy. They felt the
pain of being invalidated and left alone or
overcontrolled and unfree. They felt the pain of crying
in their rooms with no one to comfort them. They felt the
pain of being mocked and ridiculed by those around them
from their parents to their teachers and peers. They felt
the pain of having no one to talk to who wouldn't judge
or lecture them.

Eventually, out of survival, they
learned ways to numb their pain. This does not make them
any less emotionally intelligent, though they might score
lower on any of the current tests which are supposed to
measure EI. It is also possible that they would still be
able to get a high score, but it doesn't mean they are
people you would want to have as friends or partners.
This is something no EI researchers have addressed as
yet, to my knowledge. I continue to urge the people who
are seriously into EI research to consider the effects of
emotional abuse and neglect on emotionally intelligent
children and teens.

I believe that when emotionally
intelligent teens develop the above-listed survival
techniques while living at home, then apply these to
relationships outside of the family, they eventually push
away all the people they once wanted to be close to. I
have done this myself in the past and I have had it done
to me. They tend to enter into emotionally intense,
codependent relationships. By codependent I mean each
person's moods strongly affect the other's to the point
it becomes unhealthy.

It is well known, in fact, that
people from abusive homes take their survival mechanisms
along with them as adults where these mechanisms no
longer work. These mechanisms didn't work very well in
their families, but they were better than nothing. People
from emotionally abusive and neglectful homes did not
learn any better ways of surviving, and if they tried to
use better ways, they found those ways did not work with
the people they were dependent upon for food, money,
clothing, shelter and acceptance. For example, if they
tried to simply state their feelings with feeling words, their feelings were invalidated. As adults though, where people choose
friendships and relationships voluntarily, these
mechanisms become self-destructive.

I believe emotionally intelligent
people from emotionally abusive and neglectful homes can
become some of the most hurtful, manipulative, greedy,
controlling, arrogant people in society. Or they can
become depressed and suicidal. Which direction they go
depends on their personalities and life experiences. But
chances are good that an emotionally intelligent teen
from an emotionally dysfunctional family, or society,
will develop some seriously unhealthy thoughts, feelings
and behaviors as adults.

This is what I would call the dark
side of emotional intelligence. It is something that
could be prevented if parents, first, and teachers,
second, were more emotionally competent. I make a
distinction here between emotionally intelligent and
emotionally competent. A parent does not have to be
especially emotionally intelligent to stop invalidating
their children and teens. A parent does not have to be an
emotional genius to develop some basic listening skills. Some training in school or later on
could provide a basic level of competency, just as most
people have a basic competency in addition and
subtraction without needing to be math geniuses.

The sooner we provide such training
and education to all parents and prospective parents, the
sooner we can begin to avoid the consequences of the dark
side of EI.

In my own experience I have had
several teens lie to me and then admit it later. I have
known them to lie to their parents and school counselors.
They lie for several reasons. Often they lie to avoid
punishment. They typically come from very punitive homes
and go to schools where punishment and the threat of it
is used as a primary basis of behavior control. (See
related article on punishment in schools) They may also lie because they want and
need something so desperately. They may lie to get
someone's approval, attention, love, acceptance, etc.
since these emotional needs were not provided at home. I
suspect the more emotionally intelligent they were at
birth, the better liars they are.

There are many reasons we attack
others. One is to try to control them by weakening them,
making them feel guilty etc. The other is to push someone
away who has hurt us so we can't be hurt again. Often,
though, we push away the very people we need, so we end
up feeling more alone. Or we may stay with the person in
a mutually hurtful and resentment filled relationship.
The more emotionally intelligent someone is, the better
they are at hurting others emotionally if they come from
emotionally abusive or neglectful homes. Parents who
raise children in such environments are creating another
generation of emotionally needy adults.

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